Its riskiness and lack of restraint are admirable, necessary even; the films' indulgences are all of a piece with its boldness and brilliance. It feels like an uncut bag of pure Von Trier.

| Jun 18, 2016

"Volume II" is no more fulfilling than "Volume I."

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 17, 2014

It's very weird, given, but it's also effective.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 11, 2014

For better or worse, the whole exercise in lurid leg-pulling goes out with a bang.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 10, 2014

The Lars von Trier you know and love (or love to hate) is back: cynical, misanthropic, punishing.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 9, 2014

It's who "we" are individually and as a society that Lars von Trier is questioning - a few personal issues involving his own family revelations referred to in our review of Nymphomaniac: Vol. I notwithstanding.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 7, 2014

The movie, a descendant of such eighteenth-century libertine texts as "Thrse Philosophe," is less a slice of life than something told and chewed over.

Full Review | Apr 7, 2014

A notch more watchable than Volume I.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 4, 2014

Vol. I felt much wider in scope, crazier, satirical, goofy even. Vol. II narrows the lens, and has more of a desire to explain, to diagnose, to wrap things up.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 4, 2014

Von Trier is such a masterful filmmaker that every new project comes on with the expectation and air of a totalizing masterwork. "Nymphomaniac: Volume II" creates the unsated sensation of having too much and wanting more.

| Apr 4, 2014

A long plod ...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 4, 2014

The problem with "Nymphomaniac: Volume II" lies not in its display of erect penises and reddened buttocks, but rather in its dull narrative and overworked ideas.

| Apr 3, 2014

No one has ever made sex look like less fun.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 3, 2014

This is a frustrating, fundamentally flawed movie, but if one must consider it two separate animals, this latter one is demonstrably better.

| Original Score: 5.5 | Apr 3, 2014

Misery loves company, and no one loves both more than this director.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 3, 2014

"Vol. I" works. "Vol. II" works you over, and von Trier likes it like that.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 3, 2014

There's no doubt that von Trier knows how to deploy cinematic language for maximum effect - he is, quite simply, a superb filmmaker. But in this case, he confuses challenging audiences with simply leaving them in the dark.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 3, 2014

Here we go again.

| Original Score: 0/5 | Apr 3, 2014

The shocker ending struck me as both gimmicky and ill motivated, but up until then this confirms von Trier as the cinema's most accomplished provocateur, turning his attention here to the eternal conflict between pleasure and morality

| Apr 3, 2014

This is a good movie, but it lacks the visual wonder of the first, along with the sense of play at which von Trier, even at his most controversial, is so good.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 3, 2014